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A federal appeals judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship for the children of people in the country illegally or temporarily.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin ruled that a nationwide injunction on the Trump administration’s effort to end birthright citizenship that he issued earlier this year and that was granted to more than a dozen states can stand.
Sorokin said the ruling was an exception to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limited lower courts’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions. The issue is expected to return to the Supreme Court.
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Trump and the administration “are entitled to pursue their interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and no doubt the Supreme Court will ultimately settle the question,” Sorokin wrote in his ruling. “But in the meantime, for purposes of this lawsuit at this juncture, the Executive Order is unconstitutional.”
The Trump administration has argued that children born in the U.S. to parents in the country illegally and temporarily are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.
Trump signed the birthright citizenship executive order, along with a slew of other orders, on his first day in office in January.
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On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also affirmed the lower court’s nationwide injunction, and, earlier this month, a New Hampshire federal judge issued a ruling prohibiting Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide in a new class-action lawsuit.
Sorokin disagreed with the Trump administration’s argument that the Supreme Court’s ruling warranted a narrower ruling.
The plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit argued that Trump’s executive order is unconstitutional because the 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, and it also threatens millions of dollars in state funding for “essential” health insurance services contingent on citizenship status.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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